Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Is God Non-Existent Since We Have Evolution?

On some recent speaking engagements in California I spoke regarding the subject of evolution. I used an article from the Wall Street Journal as “show and tell.” It’s titled “Man vs. God” and has a picture of Darwin just about the same size as its picture of God.

I thought it was a particularly poignant because James Watson, who is a Nobel Prize winner and also well known as co-discover of the structure of DNA, made a statement that shows us that we are in a war of ideas. He said, “Charles Darwin will eventually be seen as a far more significant figure in the history of human thought than either Jesus Christ or Mohammed.”[1] This isn’t by some wild eyed liberal that everyone writes off as crazy, this is someone who has won the prestigious Nobel Prize and was co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

It shouldn’t surprise us that pagan intellectual’s write or think like this, they’re pagans exercising their job descriptions. The problem is that their message is heard by multitudes because we as Christians haven’t given a reasonable answer. In other words, we haven’t exercised our job description, which is to be ambassadors for Christ. Some Christians are secret agents who have never blown their cover before the unregenerate world.

In the article in the Wall Street Journal, on one side you have Richard Dawkins, and if Thomas Huxley was Darwin’s “bulldog,” Richard Dawkins has been aptly described by some as Darwin’s “rottweiler.” Dawkins makes various statements that are of great concern. He says, “Evolution is the creator of life… the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.” “Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip.” “God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.”[2] This is the Darwinian evolutionary point of view.

This is set up as a Pro/Con, on the one side, you have the Darwinian evolutionists and on the other hand you have someone who supports the notion of a creator. In that particular corner stands Karen Armstrong. What does she say? She asks, “But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled?” What of the “death and racial extinction”? What of the callously cruelty and evolutionary waste? Her answer is that the notion of God like any “good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity”[3] in an arbitrary world controlled by natural selection. Her point is not that God is real; the idea is that a belief in God can help you deal with the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled. In this view, the Bible is no more than psychology book that can help you cope with the evolutionary process.

All of this is being said in an age of scientific enlightenment in which the fossil record is saying no to evolution. It’s being communicated in an epoch of time, in which ape-men, fiction, fraud, and fantasy abound. It’s being communicated in a time when design without a designer is ever more untenable. In an epoch of time in which empirical science explodes the myth of Darwinian evolution. If you’ll notice I’m very careful with my words because we as Christians certainly believe in microevolution or changes within kinds, but the notion that a lizard becomes a bird is singularly untenable in an age of scientific enlightenment.

My point in saying all this is to note that we are in a war, a battle, and it is crucial that you as a believer are equipped to give a reason for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). We somehow have this notion that science is the child of secularism, that is false. Science could have only arisen within a Christian worldview. A secularist could have come up with alchemy but not chemistry, with astrology but not astronomy. The notion that secularism birthed science is completely false and as Christians we are commanded to know how to answer those who are leading our children and our children’s children astray. This should not be done by bolviating but with gentleness and respect, using our well reasoned answers as springboards or opportunities to share the grace, truth and love of the one who spoke and the universe leapt into existence.

[1] As quoted by Alister McGrath (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mcgrath/Shewsbury%20Darwin%20Festival%202007.pdf) and quoted by Tom Frame in his book, Evolution in The Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia (University of New South Wales Press Ltd, Sydney, Australia, 2009) 2. (http://books.google.com/books?id=VdbZB2yCcsIC&pg=PT9&lpg=PT9&dq=James+Watson+Charles+Darwin+will+eventually+be+seen+as+a+far+more+significant+figure+in+the+history+of+human+thought&source=bl&ots=2Ypm4-doG1&sig=eu8qluxBcvYTZo5NyOO_ioweZ2Y&hl=en&ei=tgy5Srv3FMS_tgeQrcX0Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=James%20Watson&f=false) . All websites accessed 9/22/09.

13 comments:

Boris
said...

Boris debunks Hank's entire post:

On some recent speaking engagements in California I spoke regarding the subject of evolution.

Boris says: And you’re qualified to speak about science because…? You don’t accept a lot of science Hank. Come out of your science hating and fearing closet and admit it isn’t just evolutionary theory you’re fighting here. You don’t accept modern Big Bang cosmology, old earth geology or oceanography either and those avenues of science have absolutely nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Just admit you’re doing what Bible believers have done ever since the Bible was voted on by men to be the Bible – fighting against and denying every new scientific discovery and theory that comes along.

I used an article from the Wall Street Journal as “show and tell.” It’s titled “Man vs. God” and has a picture of Darwin just about the same size as its picture of God.

Boris says: We atheists aren’t fighting any God. There is no God to fight but only dangerous dogmatic beliefs about God.

I thought it was a particularly poignant because James Watson, who is a Nobel Prize winner and also well known as co-discover of the structure of DNA, made a statement that shows us that we are in a war of ideas. He said, “Charles Darwin will eventually be seen as a far more significant figure in the history of human thought than either Jesus Christ or Mohammed.”

Boris says: Darwin is more significant than either Jesus or Mohammad because neither of them ever really existed. Christianity evolved from ancient sun worshipping cults and Islam from ancient moon worshipping cults. Neither one had a founder.

[1] This isn’t by some wild eyed liberal that everyone writes off as crazy, this is someone who has won the prestigious Nobel Prize and was co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

Boris says: Watson also said: “I don’t think we’re here for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say ‘Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose,’ but I’m anticipating a good lunch.”

It shouldn’t surprise us that pagan intellectual’s write or think like this, they’re pagans exercising their job descriptions.

Boris says: What about all the Christian scientists that teach evolutionary theory at every Christian college and university in the world that teaches science? How do you reconcile the fact that even private Christian colleges teach evolutionary theory and none teach Intelligent Design magic or creationism or even “teach the controversy” the way the creationists demand public schools do? Could it be that Intelligent Design magic cannot produce any viable results or products the way evolutionary theory does? Calling people that accept evolution pagans or atheists when the vast majority of Christians also accept evolutionary theory is just more deception from Hank and CRI.

The problem is that their message is heard by multitudes because we as Christians haven’t given a reasonable answer.

Boris says: You can’t give any reasonable answers because you don’t have any. We’ve heard all your answers and they’re ludicrous.

In other words, we haven’t exercised our job description, which is to be ambassadors for Christ. Some Christians are secret agents who have never blown their cover before the unregenerate world.

Boris says: People who believe boogymen like angels, demons Satan and the like are thankfully often too embarrassed to express these views in public or even in private to people outside their cult. And they should be.

In the article in the Wall Street Journal, on one side you have Richard Dawkins, and if Thomas Huxley was Darwin’s “bulldog,” Richard Dawkins has been aptly described by some as Darwin’s “rottweiler.” Dawkins makes various statements that are of great concern.

Boris says: Dawkins is telling the truth and that should be of great concern to you Hank.

He says, “Evolution is the creator of life… the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.” “Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip.” “God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.”

Boris says: “Theologians and philosophers have been saying for a century that God is dead, but what we confront is the possibility that man is dead, transformed into a thing, a producer, a consumer, and idolater…” – Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

[2] This is the Darwinian evolutionary point of view.

Boris says: This is also the natural point of view to take. The natural position to take on anything is unbelief until something has been proved. The existence of God has not been proved to anyone.

This is set up as a Pro/Con, on the one side, you have the Darwinian evolutionists and on the other hand you have someone who supports the notion of a creator. In that particular corner stands Karen Armstrong. What does she say? She asks, “But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled?” What of the “death and racial extinction”? What of the callously cruelty and evolutionary waste? Her answer is that the notion of God like any “good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity”[3] in an arbitrary world controlled by natural selection. Her point is not that God is real; the idea is that a belief in God can help you deal with the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled. In this view, the Bible is no more than psychology book that can help you cope with the evolutionary process.

Boris says: The Bible is simply not what people think it is. The Old Testament has absolutely nothing at all to do with the New Testament. That whole idea is a hoax created by Greek speaking non-Jewish New Testament Christian writers in Rome. Ask an rabbi.

All of this is being said in an age of scientific enlightenment in which the fossil record is saying no to evolution.

Boris says: Oh sure, in the age of scientific enlightenment we’re all going to adopt a bunch of absurd beliefs and accept magical explanations for things. We’re all going to believe in angels, Satan or that demons cause diseases and the rest of the crapola conservative Christians believe in. Transitional fossils do exist, in great numbers and are on display at universities and in museums all over the world. To say they don’t is simply a lie. In an essay published in the magazine New Scientist today, geologist Donald Prothero pointed out that reports of "huge gaps" in the fossil records have been greatly exaggerated. The fossil record says no to the Noachian flood by the way.

It’s being communicated in an epoch of time, in which ape-men, fiction, fraud, and fantasy abound.

Boris says: Apes and humans split from a common ancestor seven million years ago and both lineages are still around. For this reason the concept of 'missing link' is a misleading one.

It’s being communicated in a time when design without a designer is ever more untenable.

Brian Dunning says: “This argument is simply reflective of ignorance of the extraordinary power of evolution's bottom-up design mechanism. Once you have an understanding of multigenerational mutation and natural selection, and also understand how structures with irreducible complexity evolve, there's nothing unlikely or implausible about evolution at all. In fact, genetic algorithms (the computer software version of evolution), are starting to take over the world of invention with innovative new engineering advances that top-down designers like human beings might have never come up with. Bottom-up design is not only probable, it's inevitable and nearly always produces better designs than any intelligent creator could have.”

In an epoch of time in which empirical science explodes the myth of Darwinian evolution.

Boris says: Really? This claim directly contradicts another common creationist claim, that evolution cannot be falsified. So which is it? The truth is that evolution is one of the most strongly supported theories in all of science. It is nowhere near a theory in crisis. This claim has been made constantly since even before Darwin. In all that time, the theory of evolution has only gotten stronger. Prior to the development of evolutionary theory, almost 100 percent of relevant scientists were creationists. Now the number is far less than 1 percent. The numbers continue to drop as the body of evidence supporting evolutionary theory continues to build. So claims of scientists abandoning evolution theory for creationism are untrue.

If you’ll notice I’m very careful with my words because we as Christians certainly believe in microevolution or changes within kinds, but the notion that a lizard becomes a bird is singularly untenable in an age of scientific enlightenment.

Boris says: What is the name of the mechanism that could keep microevolution from becoming macroevolution over time? Anyone? Of course there isn’t anything because macroevolution is simply microevolution over time.

My point in saying all this is to note that we are in a war, a battle, and it is crucial that you as a believer are equipped to give a reason for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).

Boris says: You are fighting an ideological war. You lost your war on science when you could no longer stop its progress and silence its practitioners by arresting, torturing and murdering them.

We somehow have this notion that science is the child of secularism, that is false. Science could have only arisen within a Christian worldview.

Boris says: I don’t know how anyone could have the nerve to tell this lie. Christianity has never been on the cutting edge of science but on the contrary, it has been the one persecuting scientists. The list of those who earned the wrath of Christians reads like a Who's Who of Science: Copernicus, Bruno, Campanella, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler Edmond Halley, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Halley, Darwin, Hubble, even Bertrand Russell. “The war between Christianity and science has raged so long and bitterly that even 100 years ago, Andrew White, a former president of Cornell University, was able to write a huge two-volume history of the conflict entitled The Warfare Of Science With Theology. (1)

Exhaustively covering hundreds of historical cases, he was able to demonstrate that the Church generally repeats the same three-step process whenever confronted by a threatening scientific discovery: 1. First, the Church tries to crush the "heretical" view, often through censorship and persecution of the scientist.2. But as the evidence supporting the scientific viewpoint inevitably grows, the Church struggles to find a compromise position that incorporates both viewpoints.3. Eventually, the scientific victory is complete, and the Church is left to indulge in apologetics, a field of study that explains away and defends the Church's actions. In this stage, it is common for apologists to claim that there is not, and never was, any conflict between the Church and science.

If the Church were truly the source of All Truth, then it would have been on the cutting edge of science, not the persecutors of it. Instead of a vast field of theology entitled "apologetics," there should be something like "celebritics," a field celebrating all the scientific vindications of the Bible. But this field doesn't exist, and that is something else the apologists have to defend.” - Myth: There is no war between science and Christianity.

A secularist could have come up with alchemy but not chemistry, with astrology but not astronomy.

Boris says: You base this claim on what exactly? A scientist must believe in magic and magical fairies to be able to discover things? Only the religious mind could come up with pseudo-science like Intelligent Design magic, which is no different than alchemy or astrology. Once again Hank tells the exact opposite of the truth.

The notion that secularism birthed science is completely false and as Christians we are commanded to know how to answer those who are leading our children and our children’s children astray. This should not be done by bolviating but with gentleness and respect, using our well reasoned answers as springboards or opportunities to share the grace, truth and love of the one who spoke and the universe leapt into existence.

Boris says: Where are these well-reasoned answers? You supposedly have a big pile of answers somewhere Hank. I asked some questions on this thread. Let creationist Hank or any creationist be bold enough to answer my questions and respond to the points I made on this thread.

Boris, it doesn't take all that hot air to make a point. What I can't figure out is why anyone who claims to be a Christian would give credence to a c-grade science fiction writer like Richard Dawkins. He doesn't have any more evidence to support his fantasies than AIG. He just sits in his study weaving random maybes. The notion that he, or Darwin, could have any impact at all on faith in God only shows how weak some people's faith really is. This is sheer paranoia, for someone who believes in an omnipotent God.

Sure, people who want to believe it will seize on anything to "prove" that there is no God, just as people foolish enough to deny evolution will seize on anything to pretend the fossil evidence casts serious doubt on a well documented explanation. But how dare anyone who believes in God ask whether some human explanation for physical events in a material universe could even raise a significant question as to the existence of God?

Large numbers of Christians accept and teach evolution for the simple reason that it is about as obviously true as any product of human endeavor, inquiry and reasoning can be. It poses no threat to anyone's faith, except those who see phantoms that are not there and never have been.

I must add that we who experience the benefits of science within a culture shaped to a great extent by Christianity owe our science to the Muslim world, which saved the scientific gains of the ancient world from destruction and ignorance, developed them further, and passed it along via the Iberian caliphates, and via the trade that existed much of the time with Italy, before the Muslim world succumbed to competing caliphates led by religious fanatics. Every time a mechanic uses a machine with a gear mechanism which translated rotary motion to lateral motion, they own that devise to Muslim scientists.

I hate to follow my own comment, but I have to say something sensible before Boris confuses the issue. The problem with Hank's presentation is his reliance on this sentence:

This is set up as a Pro/Con, on the one side, you have the Darwinian evolutionists and on the other hand you have someone who supports the notion of a creator.

This is indeed a "set-up." The sensible response, for any sensible Christian, and any sensible scientist, is to refuse to be set up. Only in the imagination of fanatics like Dawkins do you have evolutionists on the one hand, and all those who support the notion of a creator on the other. That is a false syllogism, a bogus distinction, a delusion of the first order.

I declare the war is over. Evolution is God's greatest miracle. Who is the Wall Street Journal to tell us otherwise? Why would any Christian, possessing faith even the size of a grain of mustard seed, listen to such a notorious organ of Mammon anyway? I refuse to march to such a dubious drummer. I declare the war is over.

This either evolution or creationism is a false dichotomy put forth by the creationists, not so much people like Richard Dawkins or even me. The entire case of the biblical creationists consists of trying to disprove evolution. Their attacks against evolution are somehow supposed to prove creationism. Beginning philosophy students should immediately recognize this exercise in anti-logic. There are of course other possibilities such as theistic or deistic evolution. Or my pet theory the “universe in a box theory,” in which some of the mass-energy that comprises the universe was in a giant box in a giant supermarket until it was purchased by a lady who mixed it together with something else and put it in her giant oven and the universe began to expand. When it starts to cool and cease expanding the lady and her family will eat our universe. But we’ll be long gone so not to worry.

People that take the Bible literally always have had and always will have problems with advancing science. People who interpret the Bible differently haven't and won't. The first group interprets science according to the Bible and the second interprets the Bible according to science. It's a simple as that. The difference between a Bible literalist and a liberal Christians is probably a bigger chasm than that between a liberal Christian and an atheist. Both the atheists and the fundamentalists agree on this point too.

Yes Boris, and people who have faith that there is no God are always using science to try to back up their own delusion. Hank denying evolution and you denying God are two sides of the same coin. Stop using good science to feed your own ego. Your attacks on God and the Bible don't even pretend to prove evolution. You and Hank may agree on all the rest of us, but all the rest of us don't agree with either of you. We have too much common sense for that.

Yes Boris, and people who have faith that there is no God are always using science to try to back up their own delusion.

Boris says: I don’t have any delusions about God you do. Unbelief is the natural position to take on anything until something has been proved usually conclusively. The existence of God has not been proved and science has indeed proved the Bible God does not exist.

Hank denying evolution and you denying God are two sides of the same coin.

Boris says: Nonsense. I’m saying there is no evidence for the existence of God and Hank and you say there is. Both of you are delusional and both of you are liars. Two peas in a pod.

Stop using good science to feed your own ego. Your attacks on God and the Bible don't even pretend to prove evolution.

Boris says: No one needs to prove evolution because evolution is as much of a fact as the earth is round and that it orbits the sun. The Bible says the earth is flat and never moves. Case closed. You lose.

You and Hank may agree on all the rest of us, but all the rest of us don't agree with either of you. We have too much common sense for that.

Boris says: A Christian claiming to have common sense! Hahahahaha. ROFL! Then why don’t you use it?

On top of all your other delusions Boris, you're turning into a solipsist. You have only to proclaim a thing true, and it is so. Sounds a bit like Genesis to me. What happened to the evidence and citation you demand, rightly, of those who claim there is no evidence for evolution? Next you'll have your best friend and disciple proclaim "Boris is Lord."

Things aren't true because I say they are, but because the things I say are true, therefore, if I say it, it is so. That's not even good logic, much less good evidence. At least Hank provides footnotes for his assertions -- and if I want to prove him wrong, I can go to each citation, examine it, and respond informatively to it.